After Dark

by Wilkie Collins

  CHAPTER V.

  Of all the persons who had been present, in any capacity, at the MarquisMelani's ball, the earliest riser on the morning after it was Nanina.The agitation produced by the strange events in which she had beenconcerned destroyed the very idea of sleep. Through the hours ofdarkness she could not even close her eyes; and, as soon as the new daybroke, she rose to breathe the early morning air at her window, and tothink in perfect tranquillity over all that had passed since she enteredthe Melani Palace to wait on the guests at the masquerade.

  On reaching home the previous night, all her other sensations had beenabsorbed in a vague feeling of mingled dread and curiosity, producedby the sight of the weird figure in the yellow mask, which she had leftstanding alone with Fabio in the palace corridor. The morning light,however, suggested new thoughts. She now opened the note which the youngnobleman had pressed into her hand, and read over and over again thehurried pencil lines scrawled on the paper. Could there be any harm, anyforgetfulness of her own duty, in using the key inclosed in the note,and keeping her appointment in the Ascoli gardens at ten o'clock? Surelynot--surely the last sentence he had written, "Believe in my truth andhonor, Nanina, for I believe implicitly in yours," was enough to satisfyher this time that she could not be doing wrong in listening for once tothe pleading of her own heart. And besides, there in her lap lay the keyof the wicket-gate. It was absolutely necessary to use that, if only forthe purpose of giving it back safely into the hand of its owner.

  As this last thought was passing through her mind, and plausiblyovercoming any faint doubts and difficulties which she might still haveleft, she was startled by a sudden knocking at the street door; and,looking out of the window immediately, saw a man in livery standing inthe street, anxiously peering up at the house to see if his knocking hadaroused anybody.

  "Does Marta Angrisani, the sick-nurse, live here?" inquired the man, assoon as Nanina showed herself at the window.

  "Yes," she answered. "Must I call her up? Is there some person ill?"

  "Call her up directly," said the servant; "she is wanted at the AscoliPalace. My master, Count Fabio--"

  Nanina waited to hear no more. She flew to the room in which thesick-nurse slept, and awoke her, almost roughly, in an instant.

  "He is ill!" she cried, breathlessly. "Oh, make haste, make haste! He isill, and he has sent for you!"

  Marta inquired who had sent for her, and on being informed, promisedto lose no time. Nanina ran downstairs to tell the servant that thesick-nurse was getting on her clothes. The man's serious expression,when she came close to him, terrified her. All her usual self-distrustvanished; and she entreated him, without attempting to conceal heranxiety, to tell her particularly what his master's illness was, and howit had affected him so suddenly after the ball.

  "I know nothing about it," answered the man, noticing Nanina's manneras she put her question, with some surprise, "except that my master wasbrought home by two gentlemen, friends of his, about a couple of hoursago, in a very sad state; half out of his mind, as it seemed to me. Igathered from what was said that he had got a dreadful shock from seeingsome woman take off her mask, and show her face to him at the ball. Howthat could be I don't in the least understand; but I know that when thedoctor was sent for, he looked very serious, and talked about fearingbrain-fever."

  Here the servant stopped; for, to his astonishment, he saw Naninasuddenly turn away from him, and then heard her crying bitterly as shewent back into the house.

  Marta Angrisani had huddled on her clothes and was looking at herself inthe glass to see that she was sufficiently presentable to appear at thepalace, when she felt two arms flung round her neck; and, before shecould say a word, found Nanina sobbing on her bosom.

  "He is ill--he is in danger!" cried the girl. "I must go with you tohelp him. You have always been kind to me, Marta--be kinder than evernow. Take me with you--take me with you to the palace!"

  "You, child!" exclaimed the nurse, gently unclasping her arms.

  "Yes--yes! if it is only for an hour," pleaded Nanina; "if it is onlyfor one little hour every day. You have only to say that I am yourhelper, and they would let me in. Marta! I shall break my heart if Ican't see him, and help him to get well again."

  The nurse still hesitated. Nanina clasped her round the neck once more,and laid her cheek--burning hot now, though the tears had been streamingdown it but an instant before--close to the good woman's face.

  "I love him, Marta; great as he is, I love him with all my heart andsoul and strength," she went on, in quick, eager, whispering tones; "andhe loves me. He would have married me if I had not gone away to savehim from it. I could keep my love for him a secret while he was well; Icould stifle it, and crush it down, and wither it up by absence. But nowhe is ill, it gets beyond me; I can't master it. Oh, Marta! don't breakmy heart by denying me! I have suffered so much for his sake, that Ihave earned the right to nurse him!"

  Marta was not proof against this last appeal. She had one great and raremerit for a middle-aged woman--she had not forgotten her own youth.

  "Come, child," said she, soothingly; "I won't attempt to deny you. Dryyour eyes, put on your mantilla; and, when we get face to face with thedoctor, try to look as old and ugly as you can, if you want to be letinto the sick-room along with me."

  The ordeal of medical scrutiny was passed more easily than MartaAngrisani had anticipated. It was of great importance, in the doctor'sopinion, that the sick man should see familiar faces at his bedside.Nanina had only, therefore, to state that he knew her well, and that shehad sat to him as a model in the days when he was learning the art ofsculpture, to be immediately accepted as Marta's privileged assistant inthe sick-room.

  The worst apprehensions felt by the doctor for the patient were soonrealized. The fever flew to his brain. For nearly six weeks he layprostrate, at the mercy of death; now raging with the wild strengthof delirium, and now sunk in the speechless, motionless, sleeplessexhaustion which was his only repose. At last; the blessed day came whenhe enjoyed his first sleep, and when the doctor began, for the firsttime, to talk of the future with hope. Even then, however, the sameterrible peculiarity marked his light dreams which had previously shownitself in his fierce delirium. From the faintly uttered, broken phraseswhich dropped from him when he slept, as from the wild words which burstfrom him when his senses were deranged, the one sad discovery inevitablyresulted--that his mind was still haunted, day and night, hour afterhour, by the figure in the yellow mask.

  As his bodily health improved, the doctor in attendance on him grew moreand more anxious as to the state of his mind. There was no appearanceof any positive derangement of intellect, but there was a mentaldepression--an unaltering, invincible prostration, produced by hisabsolute belief in the reality of the dreadful vision that he had seenat the masked ball--which suggested to the physician the gravest doubtsabout the case. He saw with dismay that the patient showed no anxiety,as he got stronger, except on one subject. He was eagerly desirous ofseeing Nanina every day by his bedside; but, as soon as he was assuredthat his wish should be faithfully complied with, he seemed to care fornothing more. Even when they proposed, in the hope of rousing him to anexhibition of something like pleasure, that the girl should read to himfor an hour every day out of one of his favorite books, he only showed alanguid satisfaction. Weeks passed away, and still, do what they would,they could not make him so much as smile.

  One day Nanina had begun to read to him as usual, but had not proceededfar before Marta Angrisani informed her that he had fallen into a doze.She ceased with a sigh, and sat looking at him sadly, as he lay nearher, faint and pale and mournful in his sleep--miserably altered fromwhat he was when she first knew him. It had been a hard trial to watchby his bedside in the terrible time of his delirium; but it was a hardertrial still to look at him now, and to feel less and less hopeful witheach succeeding day.

  While her eyes and thoughts were still compassionately fixed on him, thedoor of the bedroom opened, and the doctor came i
n, followed by AndreaD'Arbino, whose share in the strange adventure with the Yellow Maskcaused him to feel a special interest in Fabio's progress towardrecovery.

  "Asleep, I see; and sighing in his sleep," said the doctor, going tothe bedside. "The grand difficulty with him," he continued, turning toD'Arbino, "remains precisely what it was. I have hardly left a singlemeans untried of rousing him from that fatal depression; yet, for thelast fortnight, he has not advanced a single step. It is impossible toshake his conviction of the reality of that face which he saw (or ratherwhich he thinks he saw) when the yellow mask was removed; and, as longas he persists in his own shocking view of the case, so long he willlie there, getting better, no doubt, as to his body, but worse as to hismind."

  "I suppose, poor fellow, he is not in a fit state to be reasoned with?"

  "On the contrary, like all men with a fixed delusion, he has plenty ofintelligence to appeal to on every point, except the one point on whichhe is wrong. I have argued with him vainly by the hour together. Hepossesses, unfortunately, an acute nervous sensibility and a vividimagination; and besides, he has, as I suspect, been superstitiouslybrought up as a child. It would be probably useless to argue rationallywith him on certain spiritual subjects, even if his mind was inperfect health. He has a good deal of the mystic and the dreamer in hiscomposition; and science and logic are but broken reeds to depend uponwith men of that kind."

  "Does he merely listen to you when you reason with him, or does heattempt to answer?"

  "He has only one form of answer, and that is, unfortunately, the mostdifficult of all to dispose of. Whenever I try to convince him of hisdelusion, he invariably retorts by asking me for a rational explanationof what happened to him at the masked ball. Now, neither you nor I,though we believe firmly that he has been the dupe of some infamousconspiracy, have been able as yet to penetrate thoroughly into thismystery of the Yellow Mask. Our common sense tells us that he must bewrong in taking his view of it, and that we must be right in takingours; but if we cannot give him actual, tangible proof of that--if wecan only theorize, when he asks us for an explanation--it is but tooplain, in his present condition, that every time we remonstrate with himon the subject we only fix him in his delusion more and more firmly."

  "It is not for want of perseverance on my part," said D'Arbino, after amoment of silence, "that we are still left in the dark. Ever since theextraordinary statement of the coachman who drove the woman home, Ihave been inquiring and investigating. I have offered the reward oftwo hundred scudi for the discovery of her; I have myself examinedthe servants at the palace, the night-watchman at the Campo Santo, thepolice-books, the lists of keepers of hotels and lodging-houses, to hiton some trace of this woman; and I have failed in all directions. If mypoor friend's perfect recovery does indeed depend on his delusion beingcombated by actual proof, I fear we have but little chance of restoringhim. So far as I am concerned, I confess myself at the end of myresources."

  "I hope we are not quite conquered yet," returned the doctor. "Theproofs we want may turn up when we least expect them. It is certainlya miserable case," he continued, mechanically laying his fingers on thesleeping man's pulse. "There he lies, wanting nothing now but to recoverthe natural elasticity of his mind; and here we stand at his bedside,unable to relieve him of the weight that is pressing his faculties down.I repeat it, Signor Andrea, nothing will rouse him from his delusionthat he is the victim of a supernatural interposition but the productionof some startling, practical proof of his error. At present he is in theposition of a man who has been imprisoned from his birth in a dark room,and who denies the existence of daylight. If we cannot open the shuttersand show him the sky outside, we shall never convert him to a knowledgeof the truth."

  Saying these words, the doctor turned to lead the way out of the room,and observed Nanina, who had moved from the bedside on his entrance,standing near the door. He stopped to look at her, shook his headgood-humoredly, and called to Marta, who happened to be occupied in anadjoining room.

  "Signora Marta," said the doctor, "I think you told me some time agothat your pretty and careful little assistant lives in your house. Pray,does she take much walking exercise?"

  "Very little, Signor Dottore. She goes home to her sister when sheleaves the palace. Very little walking exercise, indeed."

  "I thought so! Her pale cheeks and heavy eyes told me as much. Now, mydear," said the doctor, addressing Nanina, "you are a very good girl,and I am sure you will attend to what I tell you. Go out every morningbefore you come here, and take a walk in the fresh air. You are tooyoung not to suffer by being shut up in close rooms every day, unlessyou get some regular exercise. Take a good long walk in the morning, oryou will fall into my hands as a patient, and be quite unfit to continueyour attendance here. Now, Signor Andrea, I am ready for you. Mind, mychild, a walk every day in the open air outside the town, or you willfall ill, take my word for it!"

  Nanina promised compliance; but she spoke rather absently, and seemedscarcely conscious of the kind familiarity which marked the doctor'smanner. The truth was, that all her thoughts were occupied with whathe had been saying by Fabio's bedside. She had not lost one word of theconversation while the doctor was talking of his patient, and of theconditions on which his recovery depended. "Oh, if that proof whichwould cure him could only be found!" she thought to herself, as shestole back anxiously to the bedside when the room was empty.

  On getting home that day she found a letter waiting for her, and wasgreatly surprised to see that it was written by no less a person thanthe master-sculptor, Luca Lomi. It was very short; simply informing herthat he had just returned to Pisa, and that he was anxious to know whenshe could sit to him for a new bust--a commission from a rich foreignerat Naples.

  Nanina debated with herself for a moment whether she should answer theletter in the hardest way, to her, by writing, or, in the easiestway, in person; and decided on going to the studio and telling themaster-sculptor that it would be impossible for her to serve him as amodel, at least for some time to come. It would have taken her a longhour to say this with due propriety on paper; it would only take hera few minutes to say it with her own lips. So she put on her mantillaagain and departed for the studio.

  On, arriving at the gate and ringing the bell, a thought suddenlyoccurred to her, which she wondered had not struck her before. Wasit not possible that she might meet Father Rocco in his brother'swork-room? It was too late to retreat now, but not too late to ask,before she entered, if the priest was in the studio. Accordingly, whenone of the workmen opened the door to her, she inquired first, veryconfusedly and anxiously, for Father Rocco. Hearing that he was not withhis brother then, she went tranquilly enough to make her apologies tothe master-sculptor.

  She did not think it necessary to tell him more than that she was nowoccupied every day by nursing duties in a sick-room, and that itwas consequently out of her power to attend at the studio. Luca Lomiexpressed, and evidently felt, great disappointment at her failing himas a model, and tried hard to persuade her that she might find timeenough, if she chose, to sit to him, as well as to nurse the sickperson. The more she resisted his arguments and entreaties, the moreobstinately he reiterated them. He was dusting his favorite busts andstatues, after his long absence, with a feather-brush when she came in;and he continued this occupation all the while he was talking--urginga fresh plea to induce Nanina to reconsider her refusal to sit at everyfresh piece of sculpture he came to, and always receiving the sameresolute apology from her as she slowly followed him down the studiotoward the door.

  Arriving thus at the lower end of the room, Luca stopped with a freshargument on his lips before his statue of Minerva. He had dusted italready, but he lovingly returned to dust it again. It was his favoritework--the only good likeness (although it did assume to representa classical subject) of his dead daughter that he possessed. He hadrefused to part with it for Maddalena's sake; and, as he now approachedit with his brush for the second time, he absently ceased speaking, andmounted on a stool
to look at the face near and blow some specks of dustoff the forehead. Nanina thought this a good opportunity of escapingfrom further importunities. She was on the point of slipping away to thedoor with a word of farewell, when a sudden exclamation from Luca Lomiarrested her.

  "Plaster!" cried the master-sculptor, looking intently at that part ofthe hair of the statue which lay lowest on the forehead. "Plaster here!"He took out his penknife as he spoke, and removed a tiny morsel of somewhite substance from an interstice between two folds of the hairwhere it touched the face. "It _is_ plaster!" he exclaimed, excitedly."Somebody has been taking a cast from the face of my statue!"

  He jumped off the stool, and looked all round the studio with anexpression of suspicious inquiry. "I must have this cleared up," hesaid. "My statues were left under Rocco's care, and he is answerableif there has been any stealing of casts from any one of them. I mustquestion him directly."

  Nanina, seeing that he took no notice of her, felt that she might noweasily effect her retreat. She opened the studio door, and repeated,for the twentieth time at least, that she was sorry she could not sit tohim.

  "I am sorry too, child," he said, irritably looking about for his hat.He found it apparently just as Nanina was going out; for she heard himcall to one of the workmen in the inner studio, and order the man tosay, if anybody wanted him, that he had gone to Father Rocco's lodgings.